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let alone find. He didn’t touch me that day. He gave me his hand from time to time to help me down a bank or under a vine. He did something I’d never seen a man do before. He held himself in. The opposite of what monkeys do. They spill all the while. He was like a saxophonist who holds his instrument and surrounds it with his body. Gino did this in the sunlight above Verona where the cypress grow, without an instrument. And it made me want to touch him, and I didn’t.

O n the plain it is early summer. The grass is green and young. Each time the road approaches the Po, the river has grown larger.
    Here in Greece the sea between the islands is a reminder of what outlasts everything else. There on the plain the fresh water is different; the Po, as it accumulates and swells—and after a certain moment all large rivers attract more and more water to themselves—the Po insists that nothing escapes change.
    Poppies grow along the edge of the road. Willows border the river and a breeze blows their flowers across the road like feathers from a pillow.
    All the while the land is getting flatter, losing its folds like a tablecloth smoothed out by the hand of an oldwoman. In her other hand she holds plates and knives and forks. As the land gets flatter and flatter, its distances increase till a man feels very small.
    The signalman drives his machine fast, heels well back, elbows bent, wrists relaxed, midriff against the tank. Perhaps the early sunlight gives an edge to his vision which encourages speed. Yet as I picture him, I see that, just as it’s in the nature of rivers to arrive at the sea, it’s in the nature of men to dream of speed. Speed is one of the first attributes they accredited to the gods. And here in the sunlit morning before the heavy traffic has begun, beside the great river, Jean Ferrero is driving like a god. The slightest shift of his gaze or touch of his fingers or movement of a shoulder is effortlessly, without any human delay, transmitted into effect.
    The shack belongs to Gino’s friend Matteo. Matteo is away so we have it to ourselves. Gino has a key and we let ourselves in. It’s in a field near the banks of the Adige. Matteo, who sells cars, goes there when he takes a day or two off. Inside it’s a bit like a gymnasium. A punch-ball, Bermuda shorts hanging on a string, parallel bars against one wall, a hi-fi, a mattress in a corner, and pinned to the walls around it, dozens of magazine pictures of boxers.
    I knelt down to study them. Gino put on some music and pulled the lace curtain across the little wooden windowand started to undress. It was the first time for us and we played like children. He was like a man standing on a cliff edge about to dive. Very concentrated. Knees together. From time to time he glanced towards me to show me the exploit was going to be for me! I was the exploit and he wanted me to watch it too! Compared to the boxers, he was as skinny as a stick. His legs and arms came straight out of his eyes. I stopped calling him Hare and called him Eyeball. I showed him how I could make him twitch with my nail. I don’t know how long I teased him. In the end we made love. All I remember is I was on top of him and we were calling out to one another more and more, when suddenly I heard a snap and a swishing noise like a great tree falling and there was sunlight everywhere and in the sunlight with my eyes shut I rolled over. When I opened my eyes I found myself on my back and there at our feet was an apple tree packed with red apples. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I felt for his hand. When I found it, he started to laugh and made me sit up. Then I realised what had happened, because I saw the grey shattered planks. One wall of the shack had fallen outwards on to the field. The pictures of the boxers were in the grass facing the sky. I was pushing, says Gino, pushing and pushing with my feet against the planks—his laughter was all mixed up with the sunlight and with what he was